SA Passport New Security a waste of time

The Hawks have swooped on a Pakistani-run factory in Brits just north of Pretoria to bust an operation they described as a "mini-Home Affairs" office.

The early morning operation - which began early on Wednesday morning and continued late into the night - came as part of an ongoing investigation into what the police believe is a highly organised Pakistani-led criminal syndicate.

It is thought that this syndicate has its tentacles across the country.

In earlier busts in Gauteng over recent weeks, the unit arrested more than 30 Pakistani nationals who were suspected
of immigration fraud.

At the Brits property, investigators found a sophisticated operation where you could buy matching identity documents and passports at a bargain price of R24 000.

# More than 500 passports waiting for delivery or collection - already signed and stamped, with bearer details and photographs affixed.

There was also equipment for taking fingerprint impressions and an official Department of Home Affairs stamp.

This stamp was glued to a Coke bottle cap.

According to investigators, many of the blank passports found at the house included hi-tech security features recently added to the document to make it virtually impossible to forge.

"This means that these passports were acquired by the crime syndicate from corrupt officials working for Home Affairs," said one of the detectives.

The bulk of fake passports and other documentation waiting to be picked up were papers prepared for Pakistani, Nigerian and Bangladeshi citizens.

It was also revealed to Independent Newspapers during the operation that more than 80 000 blank temporary work permits had been identified as having gone missing from the government printer in Pretoria.

Piles of such permits found in the Brits one-stop-identity shop suggested to investigators that the culprits could have accomplices at the nerve centre of government bureaucracy.

During the swoop, six Pakistani nationals were arrested at the Brits address, and in mop-up operations, several other Pakistani-owned businesses were raided in the course of the day.

Led by the Hawks, the task team also included undercover detectives from the police's Crime Intelligence Gathering unit as well as Department of Home Affairs inspectors.

The new breakthrough came after the special task unit arrested eight alleged syndicate members in Heidelberg last month.

A total of 25 people were arrested in Soshanguve and three were held in Lenasia. The suspects are awaiting trial.

It was said that all of them could be part of a bigger picture involving the Pakistani mafia operating in South Africa.

A possible link with international jihadist activities is also being investigated.

Fake South African passports have been found on several al-Qaeda operatives arrested in Europe and the Middle East, over the last decade.

International concerns over the integrity of the South African passport led to its official devaluation by the European community and the US, with stringent visa requirements coming into force in 2008 and 2009.

JOHANNESBURG - The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has been hit by a new CIPRO based scam. Earlier this year a number of companies had their directors fraudulent replaced at the Companies and Intellectual Property Office (CIPRO), new bank accounts were opened, and tax refunds from SARS were diverted.

It is not yet clear how many companies have been affected, nor the total sum of money that has been lost.

There was actually nothing wrong with the security features of the previous South African passport. The problem has never been that people are forging or making fake passports, the problem has been that people are fraudulently obtaining REAL passports. The really scary thing is that home affairs officials do not seem to be able to make the distinction between these 2 different issues.

No amount of fancy security features embedded in the passport can stop this because it's an issue to do with corrupt staff not insecure passports.

The passport security features are there to prevent a real passport from being cloned or forged or tampered with. This is a very different issue to having proper processes and procedures in place to ensure only the right people obtain a passport. Unfortunately home affairs has confused the two issues and somehow thinks that just because a passport cannot be forged that that now means that passports can no longer fall into the hands of criminals and therefore they don't have to address the infinitely more difficult job of revamping the passport issuing procedures.

Birds of a Feather

This now leads to the other more recent story concerning Israel’s involvement with Pakistan in the development of their nuclear programme. We can also see the same countries involved i.e. Israel and South Africa.
So let’s just take a minute to run over events that have happened.
Back in 2004 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told the world it was monitoring scrap that had been taken from Iraqi military and Industrial sites and then transported by truck to Jordan.
This was all under the eye of the American occupational forces and could easily find its way into the international underground market for nuclear components and be sold to countries seeking their own nuclear-weapons projects.

In addition to the above story was another article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times which drew attention to a guy called Asher Karni, an Israeli businessman, living in South Africa, who was arrested at Denver Airport.
He was charged with attempting to sell parts of nuclear weapons to a businessman in Pakistan called Humahyn Khan.
According to the report this could have been a big deal to export hundreds of electrical components that were normally destined for the medical market and making them available as possible components for nuclear weapons.

Here is the problem... There are far to many of these things they call 'diligent workers' in the loop.
Take people out of the loop, then there will not be any issues.

As my automation professor told me once, "As soon as there are people in the loop, the system will fail somewhere along the line" -Feedback theory

All these troubles come from people getting bribed etc, or people selling what not to crime syndicates for some cash.
Some of the people at home affairs are really just useless, albeit the system has improved this last few years.

Have an automated system, designed by 'respectable' (oh god, should i say that) boards of governing bodies.

It is things like this that are leading us to more invasive means of identification, such as retina scanning, RFID implants, finger prints
linked to accounts etc. Wasn't ol George right on this one?

If you actually stop to think about it, crime equals freedom. If government's could 100% effectively control the movement, behavior, actions of all people then we would simply be bots. Some day they will find a way, humanity, in all our fukkedupness, will end.

The Kingdom of Zuma: 'Who needs toilet rolls when we have a constitution'

If you actually stop to think about it, crime equals freedom. If government's could 100% effectively control the movement, behavior, actions of all people then we would simply be bots. Some day they will find a way, humanity, in all our fukkedupness, will end.

Lies!
The government is a system built by people to serve the people, it is firstly responsible for protecting the people.
If government managed to 100% effectively stop crime, the measures put into place that " record every movement, control behavior and actions of all people " then we (the people) would simply be free to life our lives without fear and could coherently plan towards the future.

It's when government becomes part of the crime problem that all hell breaks loose, as has been happening now for more than a decade, we are in very very deep sheet.

Lies!
The government is a system built by people to serve the people, it is firstly responsible for protecting the people.
If government managed to 100% effectively stop crime, the measures put into place that " record every movement, control behavior and actions of all people " then we (the people) would simply be free to life our lives without fear and could coherently plan towards the future.

It's when government becomes part of the crime problem that all hell breaks loose, as has been happening now for more than a decade, we are in very very deep sheet.

Ok, you thought about it but you didn't stop and think about it. Stop everything. It is all about control. You, my friend, sound like you are part of the system.

The Kingdom of Zuma: 'Who needs toilet rolls when we have a constitution'

Ok, you thought about it but you didn't stop and think about it. Stop everything. It is all about control. You, my friend, sound like you are part of the system.

If the government knows your every action, but can do absolutely nothing to stop you from enjoying your rights, what exactly is the problem?
It's just a matter of getting the "your rights" part sorted properly.